Out Of The Woodwork
by altschmerz
Summary: After they're kicked out of Chimney's hospital room, Bobby, Hen, and Buck can't bring themselves to go home. They're all having a hard time coping. Some important conclusions are reached, and while the Hans may not answer the phone for their son, there's still someone else they need to call - someone who will. (tag to s1e3 next of kin. for my h/c bingo prompt 'vehicle crash'. gen.)


i just... really needed more follow-up to how much that must have impacted everybody to see chim like that, and after 'chimney begins' in season 2 i wanted the lees involved too. so here, enjoy this!

warnings for references to chimney's head injury and some themes of bad parenting.

* * *

For a whole host of really good reasons, Bobby Nash does not like hospitals. Does not like is probably a woeful understatement, his feelings towards them probably closer to some kind of actual phobia. As many miracles as take place there, of the truly incredible and the everyday variety, he can't escape the feeling that the very walls are steeped in grief. It doesn't matter which hospital in which city, it's true for them all - the paint itself is sick with it.

It leaves him feeling off-kilter and strange, like there's some kind of static buzzing under his skin, and Bobby wants to leave. He wants to walk back out the emergency room doors and never come back, but even more than that, overruling that instinct, he finds he wants to stay right here, rooted to this spot. Bobby wants to stay in this chair, angled so he's between Chimney, pale-faced in his pale-sheeted hospital bed, and the door to the rest of the building, and hold that still hand until it moves again, and his friend opens his eyes.

Across from him, Bobby knows that Hen and Buck feel the same way. He can see it in the smallest tremors that run every so often through Hen's hands, the stubborn set to Buck's jaw. But, ultimately, they don't have a choice, and when the nurse arrives to inform them their precious few minutes - closer to five than to two, Bobby notes with quiet gratitude - they go without complaint. It looks for a moment like Hen or Buck might have something to say about it, but a quick, sharp glance from Bobby stills any protest they may have made before it comes. It doesn't do well to antagonize hospital staff.

After they leave, none of them actually seem to want to… leave. Hen walks over to a beige chair and sits with the slow, careful movements of a person focusing on something small and easily controlled, needing to have something, anything that _can_ be controlled. Bobby watches as Buck does the opposite, pacing with frenetic steps, up and down the short ICU waiting room. Eventually he stills, looking this way and that as if he's suddenly remembered something. Hands pat at his pockets, and Bobby steps over to him, because it looks like he's getting worked up and that's not going to help anyone.

"We need to…" Buck says, a distracted mutter, eyes darting around the waiting room. Whatever is coming next, Bobby has a bad feeling about it. Hen doesn't even look like she's listening, gaze distant and lost. "We need to call his parents. We need to call them again, somebody needs to call his parents, they- they need to know." He nods to himself, quick and fierce, and looks at Bobby for a split second, then looks away again. "They need to know about what's happened to him."

"We already tried calling them, Buck," Hen says, and she sounds exhausted. She sounds about how Bobby feels. With slow, stiff movements, Hen's shoulders roll forward and the rest of her body follows, until she sits curved over in her chair like a worn, aching comma. The day weighs down on her, compressing her normally careful and upright posture, and Bobby can feel it pressing on him too.

Like nobody had responded to him at all, Buck just keeps fumbling at his pockets, trying to get his phone out. Never mind he doesn't have a phone number for Chimney's parents - the logical part of his brain that would've been aware of that has long since been overruled. He's still looking for his cell, saying again, serious and stubborn and fast, "We need to call them again. Cause they're really far away, right, and they need to know so they can get here."

"Buck," Bobby says gently, hoping to get his attention without upsetting him further. His heart gives a dull, pained squeeze and he feels a decade older than he did yesterday. A headache has been building since he got the call about Chimney, and it spiked when they finally saw him, an irony that doesn't escape him for a moment. He still has it, thumping on the inside of his skull like there's something trying to get out.

"So we should call them, right, so they can-"

"Buck, they aren't coming." The moment he says it, louder, firm, Bobby both regrets it and knows he didn't really have another option. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hen stand abruptly up from her chair, nothing like the deliberate, slow way she'd moved when she sat down. She stalks a few feet over, looking intently at what Bobby believes to be a landscape of a placid day at one of California's many, many beaches.

"What do you…" Buck's shaking his head before he can bring himself to finish the sentence. His eyes are wide and blue and young and Bobby wants him out of this hospital right now, far, far away from it. Far away from any hospital, ever. "What do you mean they aren't coming? He had _rebar_ through his _head,_ Bobby, when they hear that they're gonna have to, right? I mean, they can't just- Just-" He doesn't seem to know how to finish that sentence, voice falling off the edge of a cliff and disappearing there, an empty huff of breath all that's left behind.

"Time difference," Hen scoffs, and Bobby looks over at her. She's still got that thousand yard stare cast out at that artist-imagined beach, painted across canvass in strokes far too bright and cheerful for an intensive care waiting room. "How many…" She shakes her head, swallows hard, keeps going in a voice that Bobby gets the feeling only sounds angry to cover up the hurt it contains. "How many times, since I've known him, have I heard him say that? Two, maybe three times, cause that's all it's ever come up. Sixteen hour time difference, supposed to explain why I've never _once_ seen my best friend speak to his father. Barely heard him talk _about_ the guy."

"So they're really just…" Buck looks between Hen and Bobby, mouth slightly open as his head swings silently, like on some kind of pendulum. His focus settles on Bobby, with that look he gets sometimes, the one that's scarier than half the things they see on a daily basis. It's the look that means he's been searching for some kind of compass and has decided that Bobby is North. "You mean that. His parents aren't going to come."

"I'll call them again when he's woken up, let them know what the prognosis is. His father and his step-mother, they might decide to come, depending on what the result is, but I wouldn't count on it." Bobby tries to put his best leadership voice on, to speak calmly and matter of factly. To not let it get to him, how Buck is getting more upset and Hen's eyes, still fixed on that _stupid_ painting, are bright, bright, _bright._

"That's not right," Buck says, his voice climbing in volume just a hair, wavering on 'right', and he's still staring at Bobby like he thinks somehow Bobby's got the answer, a way to fix this. "He shouldn't- They should be here, they're his _parents._" His words are tinged with pitchy panic, the disbelief Bobby has heard before, from the kind of young people who haven't yet come to understand exactly how cruel and unfair the world can be.

"Buck," he says quietly, for what feels like the umpteenth time in this conversation.

"No, he- he _needs_ them, he's hurt and they should be here. He shouldn't be alone, being alone like that is… It's not right, he shouldn't be alone." Buck's eyes are wide and his shoulders are heaving up and down with frustrated, upset breaths. Maybe, on second thought, it isn't naivete, maybe it's coming from the kind of young person who knows exactly too well exactly how cruel and unfair the world can be.

Bobby closes his eyes for a moment and shuts that thought away somewhere else. He has one man down right now, he can't be worried about figuring out what ripped nerve endings in Buck are causing this degree of a freak out. When he opens his eyes again, he's about to say something, though he still isn't entirely sure what. Before he can, though, someone else beats him to it.

"Are _you_ planning on going anywhere?"

Both Bobby and Buck turn to look at Hen, who has finally torn her focus off that painting. She's standing with her arms folded over her chest, chin up and face determined. Despite the intensity in her tone, she doesn't look angry, not really. Just serious, and stubborn. Sure, though what she's sure of isn't entirely clear yet.

"Excuse me?" Buck, on the other hand, sounds a fraction away from anger, ready to swing into a whole new kind of upset given the right reason.

"I said, are _you_ planning on leaving him?" Hen repeats.

"What? No, of course I'm not-"

"Then he isn't alone. Cause neither am I, and neither is Bobby, right?" Hen turns to him, and when Bobby nods immediately, it's only the slightest fraction because of the look she pins him with. "See? There you go. So just…" The wave of her hand is almost enough to disguise the tremble in it. "It's like Bobby said. Whether his dad gets on a plane or not, his family is right here, and as long as I have breath in my chest he is not alone. Now, are you gonna help me make sure of that?"

Buck nods wordlessly. His brow is furrowed and his jaw is set and Bobby sees it again, the moment he tried to follow the gurney in through the ambulance bay doors. The kid's shoulders are still shaking, rapid little breaths moving his chest in and out like he's still this close to getting too upset to think straight, and Bobby steps in.

"Hey, Buck," he says, careful to keep his voice out of Captain Nash and firmly in Bobby, the way he speaks when they're off shift and Hen can't stop recounting supplies in the back of the rig, Chimney's staring off into space. It's a voice that's as gentle as it is firm, and he keeps his hands the same way, catching and holding Buck's face between them, making sure Bobby has his attention. "I need you to take a walk, okay? Just. Take a lap around the floor, then come back. Get some space, some air. Got it?"

Again, a wordless nod, Buck's eyes flicking to the floor and then back to Bobby's face. Bobby drops his hands and lets him go, watching Buck do as he was told for once without question, disappearing around the corner quickly. With one of them taken care of, and Chimney still ensconced in his bed behind that glass door, Bobby turns his attention to the only charge he has left to worry about - at least actively, anyway.

He walks over to Hen with slow, measured steps, doing everything he can to exude an air of someone who is calm and in control. Reaching out, he curls a hand around her upper arm, pulling gently to lead her back over to the chairs, taking a seat next to hers when she relents and sits down. They sit together in silence for several long, long moments, while the hospital continues to live on around them. The grief-soaked paint glints dully in the overhead lighting, a page requesting the presence of a Dr. Yarrow echoing somewhere across the floor. Bobby watches Hen, giving her time, until it's been just a moment too long and he decides it's apparently got to be him to speak first.

"How're you holding up?" he asks, bracing his forearms against his knees and leaning until they're on eye level. Hen looks back at him and rolls her eyes, straightening up and tipping back in the chair until she's staring up at the ceiling.

"Other than seeing that car all crunched up," Hen says, the words falling slowly and tiredly out of her mouth without much intention to guide them, "and my best friend with a piece of metal through his head every time I blink? I'm holding up just fine."

That's a fair point, Bobby supposes, and he copies her posture again, leaning back himself and looking up at that same ceiling. It's an off-white color, a few shades brighter than the taupe on the walls. In front of him, when his chin dips down, there's another painting. The pier, another shiny sunny oceanscape. Maybe the same optimistic, deluded person had painted them, done the whole room in 'overly cheerful beach theme'.

"The last couple of years," Hen says suddenly, tone gone even softer, bruised and some shade of reverent, "I have had some dark nights. We all do, I think, I don't think any life really gets to escape them. And for the last couple of years, on every one of mine, Chim has been there. No matter what I was dealing with, what I was sitting in, if I brought it down on myself or it was nobody's fault but luck, he always sat right in it with me. He never let me be alone with my pain, Cap. Never."

Bobby hums in agreement, wanting to avoid interrupting while Hen took the time to say her piece. She's twisting one of her hands in the other now, knuckles of her left rubbing over the palm of her right. On one pass, her wedding ring catches on a callous and she begins twisting it, the metal glinting when it catches the light.

"Buck is right," she says, and if this were any other circumstance, Bobby would laugh, enjoy a moment of amusement at hearing those words come out of her mouth. But this isn't any other circumstance, and Hen's in pain. He can hear it in her voice. "They should be here. His father should- should _be_ here, and it's wrong that you and I both know there's not a chance under the sun he's going to come."

"It is," Bobby agrees, wishing he had something more helpful to say. To do. Anything to contribute but just sitting here and listening, sending Buck on a walkaround and keeping an eye on Chimney through the gap in the curtains of his room. "If I thought it would help, I'd call him myself, over and over until someone picked up, but it won't. All we can do is be here, and we've got to trust that's enough."

Something about what he says sends an odd look over Hen's face and Bobby frowns at her, trying to get a read on what type of odd it is. He doesn't want to have to send her on a walk of her own, if she gets too worked up over it all, but something tells him that isn't what this is.

"What is it?" Bobby asks eventually. Finally, Hen looks straight over at him, and there's something other than stubborn resolve or fear in her face.

"Y'know what," Hen says, in the halting voice of someone experiencing a realization like a train, oncoming in the form of an indistinct light bursting into clarity the moment it hits. "I can't believe I didn't think of this until right now. There is somebody we should call, there's someone who needs to be here."

"Who?" There isn't the faintest shape of an idea in Bobby's head as to what her answer could be.

"I met them when he had this uh…" She waves a hand while she uses the other one to fish around at her pockets, presumably looking for her phone. "This birthday thing- you weren't there, you'd barely gotten to the one-eighteen I think. Anyways, I guess they were the parents of that friend of Chim's, y'know. Kevin. The one who…"

The sentence goes unfinished, but it doesn't need to be. Bobby knows what happened to Chimney's friend Kevin Lee, the one who died on the scene of a fire with the one-thirty-three. He'd guess there's not a person currently working at their station who doesn't know what happened to Kevin. He nods, saying, "Right, I remember."

"Yeah. The parents, Anne and John Lee, they were there at Chim's birthday, and I got the feeling, from that night and from some of the stuff he's said, that they may as well have been his parents, too, and Mrs. Lee, she, uh." Hen has her phone out by now, scrolling through her contacts and looking for a specific entry. "Anne gave me her number so I could, she said nobody would know to call her and wanted me to- I need to call her. I can't believe I didn't think about this sooner, she and Mr. Lee are gonna want to be here and- and Chim should know they wanted to be here. That they were here. I need- I need to call her."

On the first try, her thumb misses the button, and she accidentally opens the screen to edit the contact information instead. There's a small frustrated noise at the back of her throat, and Bobby clears his, holding out a hand.

"Do you want me to do it?" he asks, trying to keep any kind of inflection out of his voice, any indication of whether he thinks she should hand him the phone or make the call herself.

Hen shakes her head, taking a deep breath and closing out of the edit screen. "No," she says, and her voice has shored up, tremor gone, and gone from her hand too as she hits the correct button. "I need to do this."

Bobby watches as she gets up and walks a few steps away, stopping beside yet a third painting of a chipper summer day. The toe of her sneaker drags across the carpet as she stands there with the phone up to her ear, and Bobby can see the change in Hen's face the moment someone on the other end picks up. He's not close enough to hear the conversation, but he can see something in Hen's body ease as she has it. Bobby is glad that Anne Lee picked up the phone - mostly for Chimney, but for Hen too. It's a short conversation, and when it's over, Hen walks as if in a daze back over and sits down next to Bobby.

"They're on their way," she says, and then her hand goes fast up over her face. A long, shuddering breath heaves in and then out, and she says it again, amazed and relieved. "They're on their way, she says they're- They're coming." Bobby puts his hand on Hen's shoulder and squeezes.

Across the hall, through the gap in the curtains, he can see the peaks and valleys of Chimney's heart monitor. It's steady and does not waver, a green electric thread tracing Chimney's life, a town crier announcing it to the world, Howard Han's heart beats on, and on, and on.

When Buck gets back, he has a small tray of coffee with him that he disperses, and then listens to Hen as she explains who the Lees are and that they should be there in maybe twenty minutes. Though he has never met them before, Bobby knows who Anne and John Lee are the moment he sets eyes on them. They walk in holding hands and looking around with a kind of terrified hope, and the moment she sees them, Hen is on her feet.

It's Anne that reaches them first, the hand not clutching her husband's coming up to her chest, fingers tapping over her heart as she looks, wide-eyed, at Hen.

"Hen?" Anne asks, and Hen smiles at her. "Thank you so much for calling me, we got here as soon as we could, I…" Her gaze shifts now, taking in not just the woman who'd called her but Bobby and Buck as well, who have risen to stand behind their colleague.

"All three of you, you're- You're all here for Howie?" Anne asks in a tremulous voice, and Hen nods.

"Yeah, we're Ch-" Her voice stops and Hen starts again after a moment, whatever she was about to say lost with the nickname, replaced with a different one. "This is Bobby, and Buck. They're friends of Howie's too."

Bobby's heart gives a hard, sharp squeeze and he closes his eyes for a fraction of a moment. Something about the name has struck him, taken his breath away, first in the thin, shaking tone of Anne's voice and then again in Hen's. It makes all of this feel so much more real and so much more fragile. Chimney had gotten the nickname before Bobby had arrived at the station, and he can't remember having called the man 'Howard' more than once, very early on in his tenure.

Chimney is the name of their friend, the man who throws himself into everything in front of him with a hundred and ten percent. Howie… Howie is the name of someone's son, a reminder that this day is not just another emergency in the fabric composing their daily lives. This is a gash torn straight down the center of that fabric, this is _their_ emergency, and it all coalesces down into that one moment, the sound of that name in Anne Lee's voice.

"Oh," the woman says. The hand over her chest comes up to briefly touch her mouth before it goes back down to cover her heart. "Oh, that's… I'm so glad you're here. He's had so many wonderful things to say about you."

"He's great." It's Buck's voice, earnest and just a fraction too loud, like he's trying to make some kind of a point. "Chim- uh. Howie. Howie's really great, and we're lucky to have him."

Anne smiles wider, the light catching off the tears welling in her eyes, and beside her, John starts to speak. Starts to, only making it so far as a half-breath, aborted on the first attempted syllable. He looks down and back up and tries again, the question making it out this time.

"Can we see him?"

"I'll speak to the charge nurse real quick," Bobby tells him. "They let us have a few minutes, I'm sure they won't have a problem letting you in to see him. He's just over there, if you want to…" He trails off and lets Anne and John follow Hen over to the window to Chimney's room.

Bobby hears the soft sound Anne makes at the same time John says, rough and low, "Oh, _Howie,"_ and he turns swiftly away, heading for the nurse's station.

The hospital staff does indeed agree to let the Lees in to see Chimney. The same nurse who'd let them in to see him comes over to speak to them, allowing them in for a few precious minutes. Bobby watches them walk in, sees Anne falter on her way over to the bed, the quake of John's shoulders. They both sit down, one on either side of the bed, and Anne reaches out to stroke her fingers down the side of his cheek, avoiding coming anywhere near the pristine white bandage around Chimney's wounded head. John takes his hand, the same one Bobby had been holding earlier, bringing it up to his chest and pressing it there, Chimney's hand nearly completely covered by both of his own.

It's impossible to make out what they're saying in there, and even if he could, Bobby wouldn't have wanted to. This is something private, for the two of them and the man they'd driven twenty minutes in the middle of the night to come and be with when he needed them most.

Bobby's hand moves without conscious thought, touching lightly at his forehead, his chest, each of his shoulders, the Sign of the Cross. He's tired, beyond tired, and the feeling of the hospital around him is pushing at the edge of his awareness, but he stays rooted to the spot. He watches, through that window, with John and Anne inside, Buck and Hen behind him, all of them standing guard over their friend, their family - over their priceless miracle.


End file.
